When sequels start dropping numbers from their titles is one sign consumers can take as caveat emptor. Another is when none of the franchise’s stars is willing to show up, even for an easy-paycheck cameo. And yet another is skipping theaters entirely.

Species: The Awakening checks all three of these boxes. You have been warned. And warned. And warned yet again.

With Natasha Henstridge in absentia, the direct-to-DVD flick falls upon the supple shoulders of Swedish actress Helena Mattsson (Guns Girls & Gambling) as the resident Hot Alien Who Kills When She Gets Horny. The twist here is that she just doesn’t know it yet. Her Miranda is a university professor in pure Sexy Librarian Fantasy mode; her first-scene lecture is nothing short of lascivious, with director Nick Lyon (Hercules Reborn) shooting through her parted legs and at her adoring male students, who all but have books strategically placed on their smoldering crotches. (These guys would appreciate being pointed to the 56-minute mark of the Blu-ray.)

On the faculty with Miranda is her only family member, Uncle Tom (!), played by a very sweaty Ben Cross (The Unholy). It is he who helped make her that way — not to mention help make her, period — by mucking around with alien DNA, thus providing screenwriter Ben Ripley (who also penned the slightly better Species III) a tenuous connection to the previous films.

However, Uncle Tom (!!) has kept this a secret from his niece until now, when the corpse of a young man is discovered in the park, shortly after Miranda comes home dazed from a date — a sexual Awakening, perhaps? The answer is as affirmative as Mattsson is strikingly beautiful, and sadly, that is not reason enough to sit through this fourth and (until the inevitable reboot) final Species. Once Uncle Tom (!!!) takes her to Mexico to meet her creator, the sci-fi slasher becomes increasingly dull, despite them being pursued in part by a tentacle-sprouting nun. While Mattsson and Cross do try their best, their efforts are not helped by Lyon’s contagious disengagement and shoddy effects that recall the heyday of CorelDRAW. —Rod Lott

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Toasts Charles Grodin’s sniveling corporate villain in the opening scene of 1976’s King Kong, “Well … here’s to the big one!” While he’s referring to his hunt for untapped petroleum on an Indonesian island, the comment winks at an audience fully aware that a big ol’ angry ape awaits. Personally, I can’t help but take Grodin’s line as a reference to the movie itself: a Dino De Laurentiis production as giant-sized as its cryptozoological star; a spare-no-expense spectacle that bridged the gap between Jaws and Star Wars; and, lest we forget, a once-sacrilegious remake of the 1933 all-time classic — not just for the fantasy-adventure genre, but the art form of cinema as a whole.

Do-gooder hippie Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges, Iron Man) stows away in the ship carrying Petrox exec Wilson (Grodin, Midnight Run) and crew. Unlike Wilson, Prescott is not there for the oil; as a professor in Princeton’s Department of Primate Paleontology — try fitting that on a business card — Prescott has in his heart the best interest of the rumored gargantuan gorilla worshipped by the primitive islanders. En route to the isle, the Petrox vessel picks up something else for Prescott’s heart: the lifeboat-stranded, would-be actress named Dwan (Jessica Lange, Tootsie) — not Dawn, but Dwan, and she is dmub as drit.

Her eventual presence on the island catapults Kong into a horny tizzy; I can relate. Other than the climax’s change of venue from the ESB to the WTC, the largest difference this bicentennial Kong has over its Depression-era forefather is the cranked-up kinkiness! The ’33 Kong may have sniffed his fingers after handling his distressed damsel, but this ape intends at hitting a homer, starting with stripping Dwan from the confines of that clingy evening gown of hers. Although unnatural and imbalanced, their chemistry is a welcome sign o’ the times; when Kong saves Dwan from a giant snake … well, let’s just say the symbolism is not lost — in fact, it’s as clear as Crystal Pepsi.

Time has been both kind and unkind to director John Guillermin’s Towering Inferno follow-up. To deal with the “unkind” part firstly and quickly, its Oscar-winning (!) effects by E.T.’s Carlo Rambaldi play beyond hokey by today’s standards, heightening the comedy not intended by Guillermin or screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. (who re-teamed for the 1984 stinker Sheena: Queen of the Jungle). On the coin’s flip side, Lange’s performance now registers as one. This being her film debut, she played an IQ-challenged, dim-bulb bimbo of enormous naiveté so well, audiences and critics confused the character with the actress. We have come to know better.

The approach taken to the source material by Guillermin is admirably workmanlike and unassuming, in that he doesn’t allow his direction to get in the way of — or distract from — the action. (It’s still uncertain if he possessed an authorial stamp at all.) His shots do not call attention to themselves, with the exception of the POV of a NYC subway car as it careens toward Kong’s greedy grasp. The biggest complaint we can throw the pic’s way is that at two hours and 14 minutes, it could be considered slow … until you compare it to the 3.35-hour slog of Peter Jackson’s oversized 2005 remake, whereupon Guillermin’s trip to camp looks duly efficient. Even without Jackson’s version retroactively propping up Guillermin’s, this second King Kong remains a good time. —Rod Lott

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Movies involving cowboys and Indians were never for me, but cowboys and dinosaurs, as in Horror at Snape Island director James O’Connolly’s The Valley of Gwangi? I think I could get used to this.

A year before venturing Beneath the Planet of the Apes, the clenched-teeth James Franciscus portrayed Tuck, a cowboy who moseys down to Mexico to see his former flame, T.J. (Gila Golan, Our Man Flint). She now spends her time in a rodeo, riding horses that jump from a ramp into big tubs of water. It’s kind of a turn-on.

Tuck hopes to make T.J. rich when he discovers a miniature horse — and I do mean miniature. The animal stands barely bigger than a bug, and they have to chase and lasso it as it scampers across the desert. But that’s not the only strange creature they find. Nope, there are pterodactyls and the titular Gwangi, a mid-sized T-rex that they capture and put in the circus, which the dinosaur doesn’t like, as is evident when it fights an elephant.

Valley’s second half is a lot more exciting than the first, which starts off pretty slow. But the one thing that is consistent throughout is — as always — the excellent stop-motion effects work of Ray Harryhausen. Yet another collaboration with producer Charles H. Schneer, this was his last picture of the 1960s, capping an extraordinary run that included Jason and the Argonauts; only two more Sinbad adventures and one Clash of the Titans were to follow Gwangi before retirement beckoned. —Rod Lott

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After a Komodo dragon was utilized to wondrous comic effect in 1990’s The Freshman — stealing the show from stars Marlon Brando and Matthew Broderick — it’s tough to find the lizard threatening. It’s even tough to do so after watching the dreadful Komodo, in which three or four of these oversized reptiles menace a sparsely populated island.

The lone directorial outing for Michael Lantieri, who had won a much-deserved Oscar for Jurassic Park’s special effects a half-decade prior, the straight-to-VHS film begins with a Komodo eating a dog and its entire vacationing human family, save for one spooked teenage boy (Kevin Zegers, Wrong Turn). A year later, renegade psychiatrist Victoria (Jill Hennessey, Exit Wounds) thinks it’d be good therapy to return the emotionally troubled lad to the scene of the slaughter. Of course, she doesn’t realize the Komodos have called dibs on the turf, and not even her deep and manly speaking voice can turn them away.

The dragons are all-artificial, including computer-animated — mostly pretty well, surprisingly. But the story by Anaconda’s Hans Bauer and Milo’s Craig Mitchell is so routine and connect-the-dots, it might as well not have killer animals in it at all. However, I confess to enjoying the scene in which a dragon appears to dry-hump a moving station wagon. Needs are needs. —Rod Lott

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If you see only one Gamera adventure from the Daiei studio’s initial run (not to mention outside of all those Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes), might as well make it Gamera: Super Monster. Playing like Gamera’s Greatest Hits, the Saturday-matinee movie largely comes cobbled together from the giant flying turtle’s previous adventures. This eighth flick inadvertently sent the Godzilla knockoff to the franchise cemetery, where it stayed buried for a full 15 years.

Directed by Noriaki Yuasa (as with the other seven), the film opens on a pirate spaceship in battle. Don’t get your hopes up for an epic star war, however; Super Monster is so cheap that the skirmish is depicted only via stationary illustrations. Nonetheless, the ship sends a female alien to attack Earth, yet Earth is protected by the Spacewomen, a superhero trio. When not in their matching costumes, the three ladies individually work at a pet store, a school and a Mazda dealership. The Spacewomen occasionally shrink to fit inside a dog carrier; ride in the pet shop’s van, which takes flight as a glowing orange oval; and have a loyal friend in the genre’s required little boy in short pants. Not to stereotype, but like all good Japanese students, he plays a mean rendition of “Camptown Races” on a Yamaha keyboard.

If there’s one thing the kid likes to do more than smile, roam the metropolitan area freely and hang out with older women, it’s watching Gamera defend the world. The Spacewomen don’t do a whole helluva lot beyond some kung-fu sparring with the alien; a good two-thirds of Super Monster is given over to the fight scenes culled from the aforementioned other movies (the American versions of which often have vs. in the title). Gamera pulls out all his tricks — breathing fire, spinning like a goddamn pinwheel, doing gymnastics on industrial constructions — as he goes head-to-turd-resembling-head with the creatures Gaos, Zigra, Viras, Jiger, Guiron and Barugon — or, in respective scientific terms, a bat-dragon, a shark thingie, a squid with an extra chromosome, a dentally challenged dinosaur, a knife-headed reptile with built-in ninja stars, and I don’t even know what.

Early on, a kooky cop dismisses a Gamera manga as “just funny old fairy tales” — as good a review as any for this and any other Gamera outing. They have their place. —Rod Lott

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